Rediscovering Uranus: Could the Forgotten Planet Hold Signs of Life?

The journey of the only space probe sent to Uranus in 1986 by NASA lasted only 5 hours. In addition to having been seen in anomalous conditions, there is now a possibility that the planet contains life.

When NASA's Voyager 2 probe visited Uranus, researchers accepted the image it had transmitted: the planet was unusual because its protective magnetic field, known as the magnetosphere, was devoid of plasma, The New York Times reports .

The magnetosphere traps all the gases and other materials that are blown off the planet and its moons . These can come from oceans or geological activity. Voyager 2 found none, suggesting that Uranus and its five largest moons are barren and inactive.

Now, on Monday, a study published in Nature  and led by physicist Jamie Jasinski proposes that Voyager 2's visit occurred during an unusual increase in solar activity, which caused the planet's magnetosphere to contract . This created conditions on Uranus that occurred only 4 percent of the time in the data the team analyzed.

“If we had arrived a week earlier, we would have had a completely different picture of Uranus,” the researcher told the NYT. In other words, the only probe we have of Uranus was conditioned by highly exceptional conditions: we don’t really know the planet.The same article raises another question — could it then be possible that this forgotten planet contains life? Experts believe so.

William Dunn of University College London told the BBC that "these results suggest that the Uranian system could be much more exciting than previously thought. There could be moons with the conditions necessary for life, there could be subsurface oceans that could be teeming with fish !"

Now, NASA has plans to launch a new mission, the Uranus Orbiter and Probe , to take a closer look again in 10 years.

“Some of the instruments for future spacecraft are being designed based on what we learned from Voyager 2 when it flew through the system when it was experiencing an abnormal event,” Jasinsk said.

So, he added, “we have to rethink exactly how we design the instruments for the new mission so that we can best capture the science we need to make discoveries.”

The probe, which will be sent within 10 years, is expected to reach Uranus in 2045, and by then we will have news — after all, we are focused on Mars, but could the ringed planet hide other secrets?